ONECHORD: Meat Joy

Originally posted January 29, 2012

Meat Joy – The Time of Your Life (1984)

“‬‬What can I say about Meat Joy? This was my first adult band. This was my first band to gig a lot and make a record and go on tour and get reviews. This was my first adult love. I loved everybody in this band with all my heart. The three girls were me, Jamie Spidle (formerly of The Buffalo Gals), and Mellissa Cobb (formerly of Stick Figures). I’d seen Mellissa and Jamie perform in their respective bands and it was such a thrill to me to get to play with them. The boys were Tim Mateer and John Perkins, (who goes by John Hawkes now, due to the fact that there’s already a John Perkins in SAG.) The boys were founding members of Big State Theatre and they went on to star in In The West, which was a response to those Richard Avedon photos that were just so patronizing, really. In The West was made into a movie called Deep In The Heart (Of Texas) that you can rent if you want to explore this tangent further.‪‪”‬‬‬‬‬ ‪Gretchen Phillips‬

Gretchen Phillips

“Meat Joy was all about busting the fourth wall. We wanted everyone to do art, we wanted everyone to be creative. That’s still a cherished dream. Who knew what was going to happen at a Meat Joy show? We always began with some sort of improvisation and we always ended with a bunch of drumsticks and percussion instruments being handed out to the crowd. It was very important to me to release my first album before I was 21, and the Meat Joy album just squeaked under that timeline. We put this album out and then went on a tour of the Midwest. We had a blast, devouring Grain Belt beer and partying with the boys’ families in Alexandria, MN. I’ll never forget our show at The Blue Note in Columbus, OH. Our record had been out for two weeks and the college radio station had been playing it and the crowd was full of people I’d never seen before singing along to our songs. What a feeling! There’s nothing like that feeling, I tell you.”‬‬ Gretchen Phillips

Meat Joy

“Meat Joy had a great trick with merchandise on that one and only tour. We sold our hand-decorated albums for $5 and our hand-decorated T-shirts for $5. There was pretty much always an after-party and at this party we would pull out our blank T-shirts and our RIT dye and paints and get the people of this town to make the Meat Joy shirts we would sell at our next town. Crafting is such a great way to party. Every shirt unique and hand made. Unfortunately we had to break up. We swept up in the Austin Chronicle Music Poll for ’84-’85 and then had some stupid power struggles and broke up in the spring. It was sad. There has never been a band quite like Meat Joy since. It was a special time in music history, before the big labels discovered 'indie' music. You just looked in the back of Maximum Rock & Roll and found out who put on shows in Lawrence, KS and hoped that that venue was still open when your van pulled up. Ahhh, to be 21 and in Meat Joy again. Except for the pimples. They were a bummer.” Gretchen Phillips‬

Meat Joy in Voltaire’s Basement, 1984. Pat Blashill

“Meat Joy were Austin art punks, and their songs were noisy, folky, funny and pretty weird sometimes. In the mid-eighties, they recorded their only album (and used one of my photographs on the cover,) then broke up.” Pat Blashill‬‬

“It was a very, very democratic band. Rather unclassifiable. We would start every show with some kind of [improvisation]. We had a lot of dance, very theatrical… We’d roll around on the floor in garbage bags while films were projected onto us, and then we’d burst out of the bags.” ‬‬Gretchen Phillips‪‪

Meat Joy @ The Beach, Austin, 1985

“Austin's Meat Joy, a free-form aggregation of players who take turns on each others' instruments and encourage audience participation at their live shows, have blessed Texas with their first vinyl, Meat Joy (Flesh and Blood MT 522). Something of an aural collage, it includes stabs at styles ranging from folk to hardcore punk and punctuates them with homemade recordings, such as a tape off a telephone-answering machine. Its ingenuous approach is a refreshing change from the multitude of overproduced bands who seem to have forgotten their raison d'être: FUN! While some of this is plain silly, Meat Joy makes up for its musical amateurism with endearing panache.” Texas Monthly ‪(November 1984)